Method of separating continuous form stationery

ABSTRACT

The method of separating continuous strip form stationery having multiple plies secured together at their longitudinal edges and having periodic transverse tear perforations defining separate stationery forms wherein the plies are initially separated at one leading end of the continuous form and attached to spaced parallel and coextending rollers rotatably supported on a frame in sequence respectively. The rollers are rotatably driven in unison at the same rate to deleave the multiple ply continuous form stationery into individual continuous form plies. The individual plies are then unrolled and each separated at the transverse perforations to provide separate stationery forms. The unrolling and separating of individual plies into separate stationery forms is preferably accomplished by sequentially feeding the trailing end of each individual ply rolled on its respective roll into an automatic bursting machine.

nited States Patent [191 Graham Dec. 11, 1973 METHOD OF SEPARATING CONTINUOUS FORM STATIONERY [76] Inventor: Joseph P. Graham, Farm Ln.,

Rochester, Pa. 15074 22 Filed: June28, 1972 21 Appl. No.: 266,982

[52] US. Cl .l 225/4, 225/100, 242/569 [51] Int. Cl, B26f 3/02, B65h 41/00 [58] Field of Search 225/4, 99, I00;

[56] References Cited UNITED'STATES PATENTS 2,970,784 2/1961 Kessler 275/4 X Primary ExaminerFrank T. Yost Att0rneyCarothers & Carothers [57] ABSTRACT The method of separating continuous strip form stationery having multiple plies secured together at their longitudinal edges and having periodic transverse tear perforations defining separate stationery forms wherein the plies are initially separated at one leading end of the continuous form and attached to spaced parallel and coextending rollers rotatably supported on a frame in sequence respectively. The rollers are rotatably driven in unison at the same rate to deleave the multiple ply continuous form stationery into individual continuous form plies. The individual plies are then unrolled and each separated at the transverse perforations to provide separate stationery forms.

The unrolling and separating of individual plies into separate stationery forms is preferably accomplished by sequentially feeding the trailing end of each individual ply rolled on its respective roll into an automatic bursting machine.

3 Claims, 2 Drawing Figures 1. METHOD OF SEPARA-TING CONTINUOUS FORM STATIONERY BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention This invention relates generally to the art of deleaving and more particularly to a method of deleaving continuous strip form stationery having multiple plies secured at their longitudinal edges and having periodic transverse tear perforations defining separate stationery forms.

2. Description of the Prior Art in recent years the use of continuous form stationery has been greatly increasing. This stationery generally consists of multiple plies of record sheets with carbon sheets interleaved therebetween. These plies are secured together at their longitudinal edges. This multiple ply continuous form stationery accordingly transfers data received on the top record sheet to the other underlying record sheets. Some of the newer continuous form stationery does not use carbon sheets, and merely uses pressure sensitive paper having a specially treated back for the transfer of information to underlying sheets. Prior to using the continuous form stationery, the multiple record sheets must obviously first be separated into individual plies and then these individual plies must be burst at their transverse tear perforations to provide the individual record sheets for subsequent use.

For the purpose of separating the multiple plies a large number of deleavers or decollators have been successfully developed. As an illustration, see U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,273,162; 2,872,187; 3,079,142; and 3,514,094.

These deleavers are generally of two types. One employs a positive feed of the interleaved strips to a separating structure and the other generally employes merely a gravity feed of the strips to the deleaver from a tabulating or other machine from which the stationery is directly passed. The deleavers of the positive feed type or driven type generally use pinwheels or 00- acting friction feed rolls with driven carbon take-up rolls.

The gravity feed type deleaver is a rather large or high apparatus having generally upright side-by-side chutes for receiving individual stationery strips. A shelf is provided at the lower end of each of these chutes. A strip feeding roll in the frame moves the strips by grip transfer after the strips have been lead through the chutes. The strip feeding roll is driven in order to pull the transfer strips through the chutes in order to aid the advance of the stationery strips toward their separate stacking or collecting shelves.

U.S. Pat. No. 3,514,094 illustrates another deleaver of this type. These deleavers generally include a frame having an in-feed end with driven pinwheels for feeding the stationery material through the deleaver by engagement with the perforated margins of the stationery: Adjacent the driven pinwheels are usually trimming mechanisms for removing the marginal material, such as the control punch holes in the margin, thereby separating the plies. A plurality of inclined paper guides are next provided in the path of the stationery and at the top of each of these guides is mounted a roller. The individual plies of stationery arewebbed over each of the inclined paper guides and the carbon paper, if interleaved in the original stack, is wrapped around a carbon rewind spindle.

All of these deleavers heretofore in use are relatively large structures which are rather expensive to manufacture. They are equipped to handle very large amounts of continuous form stationery at a very rapid rate of speed. The reason for this is that they are generally used in conjunction with computers or with other large commercial recording equipment wherein thousands of these stationery forms must be processed each day.

Thus, while these deleavers are very pratical for their intended use, namely for large commercial concerns, they are completely impractical for use by the individual smaller business concern which may desire to only process, for example, 200 individual stationery forms per day, such as for client billing purposes. A machine of the size, proportions and cost as illustrated in the foregoing Patents would be completely out of the question for such an operation. Yet, on the other hand, it has been discovered that the individual business concern of a proportionately smaller size unnecessarily consumes a great deal of expensive employee labor time in separating this continuous form stationery by hand.

The method of the present invention solves this problem and provides the smaller business man with a method for rapidly deleaving the continuous business stationery form in an easy and inexpensive manner.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The method of separating continuous strip form stationery having multiple plies secured together at their longitudinal edges and having periodic transverse tear perforations defining separate stationery forms in accordance with the present invention is accomplished by carrying out the steps of initially separating the plies at a leading end of the continuous form and then attaching the leading ends of selected of the initially separated ply ends in a separated sequence respectively to corresponding spaced parallel and coextensive rollers rotatably supported on a frame with their axis transverse to the web of the multiple ply continuous form stationery. The rollers are then rotatably driven in unison at the same rate to deleave the multiple ply continuous form stationery into individual continuous form stationery plies by separately winding the selected plies on the respective rollers and thereby separating the secured edges with the pull of the driven rollers on the selected plies. The plies are then unrolled and separated at the transverse perforations to provide the separate stationery forms.

This step of separating the plies into the individual separate stationery forms is preferably accomplished by sequentially feeding the trailing ends of the rolled individual plies into a self-feeding burster machine while permitting the rollers to free wheel such that the individual plies are sequentially burst to provide a stacked pile of the separate stationery forms.

When the continuous form stationery consists of multiple plies of paper interleaved with carbon plies, the paper plies are attached to the rollers and the carbon plies may be permitted to pass freely on between the rollers for pile accumulation of the carbon, or the carbons themselves may be wound on separate rollers which are driven at the same rate as the rollers which wind the paper plies.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS Other objects and advantages appear hereinafter in the following description and claims.

The accompanying drawings show, for the purpose of exemplification without limiting the invention or the claims thereto, certain practical embodiments illustrating the principles of this invention wherein:

FIG. 1 is a view in side elevation of a deleaver illustrating the principles of the method of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a view in front elevation of the deleaver illustrated in FIG. 1 with the individual plies of the multiple ply form stationery removed.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS Referring to the drawings, the deleaver 1 consists essentially of a frame 2 having side walls 3, bottom wall 4 and top cross braces 5.

The side walls 3 rotatably support paper web rollers 6 and carbon web rollers 7. These rollers 6 and 7 are rotatably supported in simple sleeve bearings retained within the side walls 3 to which axle pins 8 and 9 of the rollers 6 and 7 pass.

The axle pins 9 of rollers 6 and 7 pass all the way through their respective side wall 3 with drive pulleys 6 and 7' respectively secured thereto in order to rotatably drive the rollers.

The drive pulleys 6' and 7 are in turn driven by a simple belt drive wherein a belt 10 is driven by a drive pulley 11 which is pivotally mounted to the outside of the side wall 3 as indicated in FIG. 1 about its axis 12. Drive pulley 11 is provided with a crank arm 13 having a crank handle 14 for hand driving the drive wheel 11.

As can be best noted in FIG. 1, the drive belt 10 is interleaved around the paper web pulleys 6' and the carbon web pulleys 7' and then passes the pulley 15 on back to drive pulley 11.

The tension of the continuous belt 10 may be varied by adjusting tension pulley 15 by pivoting its pivot arm 16 about pivot 17 and then securing pivot arm 16 in the desired position by inserting pin 18 through a hole provided in pivot arm 16 on into a selected adjustment hole 19 provided in the side panel 3 of the deleaver as disclosed in FIG. 1.

The continuous strip form stationery 20 consists of multiple paper plies 21 with interleaved carbon plies 22. Continuous strip form stationery 20 also has each of its individual plies or strip plies provided with periodic transverse tear perforations to define separate stationery forms. These transverse tear perforations are not shown in the figures.

The plies 21 and 22 of the continuous form stationery 20 are initially separated at their leading end as illustrated and they are attached to the rollers in a separated sequence respectively such that paper webs 21 are attached to the rollers 6 and the carbon webs 22 are attached to the rollers 7. The easiest method of attaching the strip ends to their respective rollers is by the use of a small amount of tape such as transparent plastic tape. Clips may be provided on the rollers for this purpose, however, this is not necessary.

It will be noted that the paper webs 21 are attached to the top side of the rollers 6 and the carbon webs 22 are attached to the bottom or under side of the rollers 7 in view of the fact that rollers 6 are driven in the opposite direction of rollers 7.

The driving wheels 6' and 7' are then driven by rotating drive wheel 11 with crank handle 14 to the right as indicated by the arrow in FIG. 1. This causes the rollers to be driven in unison at the same rate to deleave the multiple ply continuous form stationery 20 into the individual continuous form stationery plies 21 and 22 as illustrated by winding them on their respective rollers.

The continuous form stationery plies are secured together in their multiple ply form as indicated at 20 at their outer longitudinal edges and thus the pull of rollers 6 and 7, which pull their respective attached webs away from each other, causes the perforated secured edges of the continuous strip stationery form to become unattached as indicated.

In actuality, the carbon web roller 7 may be eliminated if desired such that the carbon webs 22 are permitted to pass freely between the rollers 6 and thereby accumulate freely in a random stack in the rear of the deleaving apparatus 1.

Rather than using a belt drive 10 as illustrated in the figures, one may also use a chain drive, and in this instance, it is desirable to employ clutch mechanisms between each of the drive pulleys 6' and 7 and their respective roller drive shafts 9 such that they can readily be disengaged to permit unrolling of the wound paper webs 21 and the carbon webs 22 without disengaging the chain drive.

Referring once again to the structure as actually illustrated, once the continuous form stationery 20 has been deleaved and the individual plies have been rolled up on their respective rollers, the drive tension applied to belt 10 is released by pulling pin 18 to permit tension wheel 15 to lower.

The paper webs 21 are then respectively unwound from their respective rollers 6 in sequence and burst at their transverse tear perforations in order to provide the separate or individual stationery forms defined by the transverse tear perforations which are periodically provided in each of the individual continuous strip forms 21.

The carbon continuous strips 22 are merely unrolled and discarded.

Once the drive tension of belt 10 has been released the rollers 6 and 7 are free wheeling to permit easy unwinding of the respective webs wound thereabout. The separating of the individual stationery forms at the periodic transverse tear perforations is called bursting and is usually done either by hand or when done in larged quantities by a burster. An example of such a present day burster is the burster model 1740-41 manufactured by Uarco Inc.

An additional feature of the method of the present invention is that after the belt tension or drive tension of belt 10 has been released, the paper stationery web forms 21 may be sequentially fed directly from their respective rollers by feeding the trailing end of the continuous form into an automatic feeding burster as just mentioned. The forms then arrive at the other side of the burster apparatus in a separated stacked form.

When one continuous ply 21 has been passed through the burster, the trailing end of another continuous web is inserted into the burster and the automatic feeding of the burster thereby automatically also unrolls the web from its respective roller 6 on the deleaver.

By the foregoing disclosure, it can be readily seen that the method of separating continuous strip form stationery in accordance with the present invention is extremely simple yet very effective-and while not suitable to large commercial application, it is extremely applicable to smaller business setups where no more than 200 to 1,000 forms, for example, must be processed per day as for billing purposes or the like. What normally takes hours of time to do is thus accomplished in minutes.

I claim:

1. The method of separating continuous strip form stationery having multiple plies secured together at their longitudinal edges and having periodic transverse tear perforations defining separate stationery forms, comprising the steps of:

initially separating the plies at a leading end of the continuous form;

attaching the leading ends of selected of said initially separated ply ends in a separated sequence respectively to corresponding, spaced, paralled and coextensive rollers rotatably supported on a frame with their axis transverse to the web of said multiple ply continuous form stationery;

rotatably driving said rollers in unison at the same rate to deleave said multiple ply continuous form stationery into individual continuous form statio nery plies by separately winding said selected plies on their respective rollers and thereby separating the secured edges with the pull of said driven rollers on said selected plies;

unrolling said separated plies; and

separating each individual ply at said transverse perforations to provide said separate stationery forms.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the steps of unrolling and separating are carried out by the steps of:

sequentially feeding the trailing ends of said rolled individual plies into a self-feeding burster while permitting said rollers to freewheel; and

bursting said individual plies in said burster at said transverse perforations to provide said separate stationery forms.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein said multiple plies consist of paper plies interleaved with carbon plies and the step of attaching is characterized in that all of the separated leading paper ply ends are said selected ends and the separated leading carbon ply ends are permitted to pass freely on between said rollers for pile accumulation of said carbon plies. 

1. The method of separating continuous strip form stationery having multiple plies secured together at their longitudinal edges and having periodic transverse tear perforations defining separate stationery forms, comprising the steps of: initially separating the plies at a leading end of the continuous form; attaching the leading ends of selected of said initially separated ply ends in a separated sequence respectively to corresponding, spaced, paralled and coextensive rollers rotatably supported on a frame with their axis transverse to the web of said multiple ply continuous form stationery; rotatably driving said rollers in unison at the same rate to deleave said multiple ply continuous form stationery into individual continuous form stationery plies by separately winding said selected plies on their respective rollers and thereby separating the secured edges with the pull of said driven rollers on said selected plies; unrolling said separated plies; and separating each individual ply at sAid transverse perforations to provide said separate stationery forms.
 2. The method of claim 1 wherein the steps of unrolling and separating are carried out by the steps of: sequentially feeding the trailing ends of said rolled individual plies into a self-feeding burster while permitting said rollers to freewheel; and bursting said individual plies in said burster at said transverse perforations to provide said separate stationery forms.
 3. The method of claim 1 wherein said multiple plies consist of paper plies interleaved with carbon plies and the step of attaching is characterized in that all of the separated leading paper ply ends are said selected ends and the separated leading carbon ply ends are permitted to pass freely on between said rollers for pile accumulation of said carbon plies. 